Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Screening Pregnant Women for HIV Antibody: Cost-Benefit Analysis
AIDS & Public Policy Journal 6, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 98-103 Abdolazim Houshyar
This article sets forth a methodology for analyzing the costs and benefits of an intervention policy aimed at slowing the AIDS epidemic by screening pregnant women in high-risk regions of the United States. In particular, it focuses on the effect of a program of voluntary, confidential screening followed by voluntary educational counseling of pregnant women who test positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in New York City. The model that follows has been developed to evaluate the effectiveness of screening policies. Screening can influence the infection transmission rate between identified HIV-positive women, their future children, and their susceptible contacts. Screening effectiveness is measured by: 1) the number of tests and the associated costs required to identify one HIV-positive woman, 2) the number of cases prevented by the screening program followed by counseling, and 3) the cost of such a screening program per case of AIDS prevented. The model incorporates false-positive and false-negative test results, the population seroprevalence, the transmission probability between an infected pregnant woman and her child, and the efficacy of the information on seropositivity and seronegativity in preventing transmission of AIDS in the general population. In this article, the number of pregnant women who need to be tested, the number of infected individuals detected, the number of HIV-positive newborn babies avoided, and the number of women with false-positive and false-negative test results will be estimated. In addition, the number of cases of HIV infection that might be prevented by noncompulsory screening of pregnant women will be estimated, and the financial costs of such a program will be evaluated. The model will project the overall impact of such a screening program on the prevalence of AIDS in the population. To compensate for the possible inaccuracy of the data, a sensitivity analysis will also be conducted.
910615
APPJ916208
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Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
